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burr-ell · 7 months

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Conflict, Communication, and Chemistry: A Laura and Marisha PC Appraisal

A couple of people have observed across all three main campaigns that Laura and Marisha consistently make characters that ultimately don't seem to fully understand each other for various reasons, and their characters' chemistry (or lack thereof) is an outgrowth of that. And until recently, I thought that was one of those things that I personally saw but not everyone else was obligated to view the same way—chemistry is often subjective, and it’s for that reason that I tend not to take seriously a lot of the common shipping-based arguments about chemistry.

But in the most recent 4-Sided Dive, Marisha, Laura, and Sam said this:

MARISHA: I have enjoyed…of course, like, delving into the relationship is always fun, but then relationship tension is also fun. LAURA: Yeah, I feel like you guys [points between Marisha and Sam] are really big on—you really like relationship conflict too. You guys talk about that a lot. SAM: Of course. Because I don’t have any in my real life. LAURA: I’m terrified of conflict. That translates to the game as well, I don’t like conflict. SAM: You don’t like conflict? Even in the game, in this dramatic storytelling game that we’ve made together? LAURA: No! I don’t like fighting! SAM: You just want everything to go fine? LAURA: Yes!

And I think that made things click into place for me. This is the reason why their characters have this through-line, because their approaches to conflict bleed through to their character choices. Laura's characters’ issues tend to be internal; they tend not to have prolonged fights with other characters, and their arcs are often person-vs-self stories about emotional walls and struggling with self-centeredness in some capacity. Marisha's characters, on the other hand, are upfront about their problems and are completely unafraid to go toe-to-toe with other party members, and their character development is often a product of a straightforward person-vs-person or person-vs-society story about overcoming their physical obstacles. And it’s part of why their current characters’ relationship has played out in a way that’s strange and off-kilter, because their interactions do not read to me like the players really understood this about each other before the public talk show discussion quoted above.

In Campaign 1, Vex and Keyleth’s relationship is conspicuous by its absence; even within their superficial commonalities, they are not particularly drawn to each other beyond circumstance. Vex is unquestionably the leader of Vox Machina insofar as they have one, and she does this by consistently finding a compromise—when the group is arguing about their best course of action in Whitestone or Westruun or Draconia or the Nine Hells, Vex is the one who mediates and strategizes their way out. She's very good at seeing all sides of an issue, threading the needle, and coming to a decision that keeps the group happy and together. The problem is that she tends to do this at the expense of her personal needs being met; she bottles up a lot of her emotions and issues and she struggles with letting people in, and has to work on not internalizing and holding grudges.

Keyleth, on the other hand, consistently takes stances and isn't afraid to be the moral compass of the party, like when she notices how dark everyone is becoming during the Briarwood arc and fights to correct it. She lets herself feel what she feels rather than pushing it away, which allows her to overcome the physical and mental challenges of her Aramente and affords her more emotional freedom and honesty. Sometimes, though, these traits work against her—she will argue a point and continue to belabor it until someone else steps in; she can be self-righteous due to her own naïveté; and her emotional openness can be poorly-timed and lead her into indecision and dithering. One of the few one-on-one conversations Keyleth and Vex have is after Vex dies and is brought back in the Sunken Tomb, and Vex is quickly exasperated at having to deal with Keyleth’s feelings when she’s the one who died and she’s just trying to piece together what happened.

Vex is often frustrated by Keyleth's hardline beliefs and feelings and has to compromise around them; Keyleth sees conflict in a much more literal way than the internalization and masking that Vex does, and as a result never really digs deeper into who Vex is as a person. By the end of the campaign, they call each other sisters, which I think is appropriate—they're two people who care about each other but have little in common, tied together by the single factor of Vax. Outside of that commonality, there's little reason for them to be especially close the way they are with other members of the party; if there was, they’d have been close at any point throughout the previous 114 episodes.

Beau and Jester form a stronger friendship in Campaign 2, but they seem to understand just enough about each other to get along well while not being able to truly see each other. Jester is cheerful and goofy by nature, but she also projects that particular image in order to make the people around her happy and keep them together. While she will speak her mind, she doesn’t tend to stand at one end or the other of the ideological and political spectrum of issues faced by the Nein and is simply happy to have an adventure and sow some chaos. Even when having difficulties with the Traveler, Jester is willing to work through it and find a solution that works for both of them in order to preserve the relationship.

Beau, meanwhile, approaches the world abrasively and aggressively and is a bit too prepared to burn bridges with people if she thinks they aren’t worth it. While she recognizes the nuances of the conflict between the Empire and the Dynasty, she’s ultimately loyal to the Cobalt Soul’s mission of using knowledge to fight corruption. She’s perfectly happy to butt heads with Caleb or Fjord or Molly if she thinks they’re in the wrong, and her cut-your-losses mentality puts her in conflict with how important the Traveler is to Jester.

This difference is thrown into especially sharp relief not only by how they deal with their respective fathers, but also the response they think the other should have. Jester wants to reconnect with the Gentleman and for him to repair his and Marion’s relationship, while Beau has fully written off Thoreau and has no interest in reconciling. Jester is upset at Beau’s suggestion that she just forget her dad and not put effort into someone who won’t do the same for her, while Beau is less than impressed with Jester’s suggestion that Thoreau really does care about her and it might be worth it to patch things up, and the upshot of it all is that the way everything plays out makes it clear that both of them have badly misread the other’s situation.

Beau, like Keyleth before her, doesn’t seem to understand that Jester is masking a lot of insecurities and wants someone to see her for who she is and not an idealized version of her; Jester actually stops confiding in Beau after Beau tells her she doesn’t need Artagan and that she’s the actual god. Jester, meanwhile, is unwilling to set aside her dreams and fantasies and is at her happiest when she can roam and adventure freely, something for which Beau would not set aside her responsibilities and beliefs in the mission of the Cobalt Soul. They’re still good friends, but going their separate ways is a benefit to both of them.

And now we have Imogen and Laudna, whose relationship felt lacking well before it became romantic. A lot of time and energy has been spent by multiple people trying to articulate exactly why that is, and there are many reasons—Laudna’s concept seems better-suited to a short form narrative and it took about 60 episodes for her character to stop feeling entirely superfluous; the relationship lacks any substantive conflict or disagreement and the supportiveness feels more like a mutual security blanket; they seem to have little in the way of an actual dynamic outside of melodramatic plot moments. But the relevant issue here is that Laudna is, for all intents and purposes, a yes-woman who supports whatever Imogen wants to do simply because Imogen wants it (a trait that notably does not carry over to anyone else in the party—she is completely unafraid to delve into negative emotions and traits with Ashton and Orym, both of whom are played by people Marisha has historically worked with to produce some of the best relationship dynamics on the show). If Imogen wants to run off and live in a cottage or join the Vanguard or commune with Predathos or not commune with Predathos, Laudna will uncritically encourage her no matter what, because per Marisha’s words on the Laudna playlist, “Laudna will protect and attack anyone who tries to fuck with her girl”. Part of Laudna’s core concept, baked in from the beginning, is the belief that Imogen “deserves the world”. Between these two players, the one who enjoys conflict is playing a character who will do everything in her power to shield and soothe the character being played by the one who hates conflict. The result feels less like a healthy supportive relationship and more like a recipe for enablement.

When episode 77 came out, I commented that for the first time I actually started to feel something—anything at all—about Imogen and Laudna, and it’s because I started to get a sense that there might be some real potential for tension and tragedy. And now—between Laudna imploring Imogen to move on from her if she dies, Marisha seeming to suggest at one point that Laudna may not have a future at all, Imogen admitting that she’s outright disgusted by Delilah, the disconnect between the players’ approaches to conflict, Imogen (and Laura, out of character) being shocked and horrified by Laudna absorbing the soul of the Willmaster, and Laudna now intentionally working with Delilah in order to protect Imogen—I’m starting to wonder if their relationship may indeed be on a collision course.

Now this could end in multiple interesting ways: Imogen could be driven away from Laudna, who is slowly consumed by Delilah; Laudna could choose to sacrifice herself to end Delilah for good and Imogen is forced to move on; Imogen and Laudna could Thelma and Louise their way off a cliff; or maybe someone just points out how unhealthy this all is and they start to be more honest and less codependent and their relationship improves after a lot of hard work. But something has to happen.

Laura and Marisha have, multiple times now, been asked questions about Imogen and Laudna’s relationship that they have answered with varying degrees of “we never really talked about it”, sometimes referring to in-game conversations and sometimes not, and that is both unsurprising and a bad sign of things to come. I don’t know exactly how much out-of-game conversation happened between previous canon relationships that Laura and Marisha have played, but this one desperately needs it—because for three straight campaigns, all we’ve seen is every indication that these are two players who are uniquely ill-suited to play a romance the way either of them would want to.

#cr meta #critical role

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utilitycaster · 7 days

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Do you think the god debate and narrative around it in C3 would be more compelling if Ludinus only focused on killing the Betrayer Gods a la Cassida? As many pointed out, the impact that Primes have on mortals is largely positive. Aside from cool abilities, they give healing, meaning and comfort to their followers. Up until very recently (Braius) we haven't seen Betrayers do much of that and their followers are, more often than not, people who would cause great harm to others.

I actually do not. There's multiple questions in here, and honestly I could probably write 5000 words on any of them, which I'm not going to do, but I will split this up into components.

First: I don't think Ludinus is the problem at all. He is unambiguously the villain, but he is always narratively compelling. It is fun to make fun of him because he is genuinely a fantastically crafted villain. When I dunk on villains who are boring, it's nowhere near as fun because all you can say is "wow what do you even do. boring-ass" whereas Ludinus is full of interesting possibilities and hooks to be like how can you be so smart and have lived for so long and seen so much and come to the fucking worst conclusions. There's a reason why people have been side-eyeing him consistently since at least his first speaking appearance in Campaign 2, if not his first appearance ever, in Felderwin, and it's because he's a great character who I hope dies horribly. So his motivations are fine. I'm not saying the possibility you suggest wouldn't be a very interesting different story, but my complaints about narrative and the gods debate do not require anything different from Ludinus, who has been a consistent bright spot within the muddied narrative by being a consistent blot on Exandria and also sometimes the moon.

The narrative and the god debate are intertwined - the issue is a dull indecision that plagues both of them - so I'm splitting this one up a little differently.

What do I as a viewer think is the most reasonable stance regarding the gods based on my understanding of the worldbuilding of Exandria?

What is interesting to watch?

And therein lies the problem. I, as a viewer, think that killing the gods is a bad idea, and I've articulated this in various spaces and am not going to write another 5000 words about it right now, but between the events of past campaigns; the events of this campaign including Downfall; who within the narrative supports the choice to not kill the gods; and the complete uncertainty regarding the fate of existence let alone mortaldom should they be killed or chased away I have come to this position. Any counter-argument tends to rely either on entirely false statements, or a nebulous "a better world is possible" without any assurances that the allegedly better world is, in fact, probable. Ironically enough, I am not willing to take a leap of faith.

But as for what's interesting to watch? That's an entirely different story. My issue with the the gods debates is that they are endless, circular, indecisive, and between the least informed group of PCs we've had by a large margin. They say the same 5 sentences in different words over and over. It's like watching a bunch of high people while you're sober. It only hits hard if you're stupid. For more on this see here and here. If Bells Hells had decided 30 or 40 episodes ago to side with Ludinus, or to try to only kill the Betrayers, or to oppose Ludinus but kill the gods? Great. Fantastic. I'm not saying I wouldn't have had my critiques of it given the worldbuilding setup as described above, but I think it would have held up infinitely better as a standalone story, at least, than it does now. My problem is that instead they had endless circular indecisive conversations during a bunch of (comparatively much more interesting) fetch quests, finally came to some kind of conclusion that gave the end game some structure and direction like 4 episodes ago, and then had yet another wrench thrown at them. And convention panels and Cooldown have consistently confirmed my suspicions about the lack of planning in the places where this campaign really needed it. In my conversations after the latest episode, multiple people independently used the term "sludge" to describe their feelings about the plot.

In actual play, I want characters who have clear conviction and make bold and decisive moves because handwringing forever in such a slow-moving medium is excruciatingly boring. Like, do I think Percy in the Briarwoods arc is making good, informed decisions that make him a moral person? Absolutely the fuck not. Do I think the story where he's shooting first and asking questions later is infinitely superior to one where Vox Machina can't decide what to do for 50 episodes? Yeah.

The god debates are ultimately a symptom of this narrative aimlessness. The lack of an answer is the problem, not what the answer is.

#answered #partner-of-the-light #critical role #cr discourse #i have maintagged this because i think it is something that hasn't really been articulated #i think tbf most of us have been sucked into the gods debates too but like. the problem is that this is still a debate in episode 107

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simtleman · 9 months

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The Venice Express (Download Tray Files & CC)

So I've been receiving a few DMs asking me whether my lots are up on The Gallery or somewhere else to be downloaded. To be more specific, my Grand Express (Columbia Station) Lot seems to be getting a lot of attention (which I'm so, so glad!).

As you may already know if you follow my Tumblr, my game and therefore my save file is kinda messed up ever since the last update (mostly my UI), so unfortunately I don't think I'll be able to share that lot with you guys. However, I've decided to create a brand new train from scratch and finally contribute somehow to this thriving historical Sims 4 community I'm loving so much. I may not have the talent to create CC myself, but as a former stylist I sure can put things others have created together to make 'em look nice lol. Without further delay, allow me to introduce you to The Venice Express!

Clearly inspired by the legendary and breathtaking Venice Simplon Orient-Express, the lot consists of a three wagon train (two of them with private cabins, the third one featuring a lounge bar and a small kitchen), a log cabin and a recreation area with a wooden arbor. Here are some screenshots:

Private cabins (they're all practically equal):

Lounge bar wagon/kitchen:

Log cabin:

Before you go ahead and download it into your game, a few IMPORTANT disclaimers:

The lot is a 50x50. If you want the enviroment to look just like my screenshots, make sure to place it in the big lot on top of the hill on Mount Komorebi.

I use ReShade in all my screenshots, so lighting/colors may vary from what it looks like on your game.

I used items from a few expansions and packs (listed in picture below), so if you don't own them those items might be replaced with others.

Like all my builds, this is a heavily CC based lot. If you don't have a powerful PC, it might get laggy while trying to play with it.

Regarding the CC, I do not own nor take credit from any item included within this lot. All credit goes to their amazing creators.

The .ZIP file (3.19 GB) includes two folders: one for the Tray Files and another one with all the CC. I'm 100% sure all the CC I used is already public for everyone; if it's not, it's been definitely longer than three weeks since it has all been in my game and you (the CC creator) shouldn't be putting content behind permanent paywalls to begin with ;)

I did use bb.moveobjects on while building and have NOT playtested it, so you might have to move some items for them to be functional.

The lot is currently set as a Residential, but you can certainly change it to anything else... including a Residential Rental and perhaps making each cabin a different apartment.

That's all for me! This is the very first piece of content I share for others to download, so if you run into any kind of issues do not hesitate to let me know and I'll try to help best I can :)

If you do like it, please make sure to like this post (maybe even comment on it if you feel kind enough!) and please, please, PLEASE do tag me on your screenshots if you share them here on Tumblr. I'd love to see what you guys make with it!

Download: Mediafire

Enjoy ♡

#ts4 screenshots #ts4 retro #ts4 vintage #sims 4 cc #ts4 1920s #ts4 simblr #ts4 lot download #ts4 decades challenge #ts4 legacy

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chrysanthemumgames · 19 days

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Hello! Can you explain the mechanics/consequences of selecting that you do not experience romantic attraction at the start of the game? Does that choice to be aro mean all routes are automatically set to platonic for the rest of the game (which is totally fair if true! I think it's good to have a choice where a player won't have to "worry" about romance in the playthrough at all), or can the PC identify as Aro yet still access a romantic route? (For example, my MC identifies on the Aro spectrum and the choice "do not generally experience romantic attraction" seems applicable, but I would still like to play a romantic route with the different ROs.)

I was prompted to ask this because I started a playthrough and selected the Aro-coded choice at the start, and then after the holiday hangout (which was with Charon, if that matters), the only two options available were to say that I essentially no longer had a crush on them and wanted to be friends, or that I was disillusioned with them before and no longer cared about them as much. I wondered if this was normal for the end of the hangout, or Charon exclusive, or a result of my initial romantic attraction choice.

Thank you for any insight! :) I'm having a lot of fun with the game so far but wanted to clarify this choice before progressing farther.

Hi anon!

I believe that option is meant to close off certain romance-oriented dialogue, but I may have been somewhat inconsistent with when it does and when it doesn't, if those are the two options you're getting after Charon's event. I may have waffled a bit with what I was doing without noticing, since being aromantic is of course a spectrum thing.

I'll have a look at it when I go to handle bugs and other things for an update, and make sure to get that functioning consistently.

It's not too much of an issue yet, because nothing in the first game locks in whether the eventual bond the PC has with the character who's route they're on is romantic or platonic (so you can play forward without worry about that), but those options sound odd for the scenario you describe, so I'll see if I can get it fixed up.

Thanks for your question, and I'm glad you're enjoying FoA!

#ask #kind anon #game design

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stellaralignment · 8 months

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After reading @kira-serialfaggot 's post about inaccessible menus and @butterfly-sapphire post about non-customizable menus figured I now had sufficient excuse to rant about how I hate how every big restaurant's ""solution"" to these two problems is somehow always the worst fucking app I've ever had to use in my life.

So, to clarify real quick. I agree with both previous posts. Places that serve food should have their menu easily accessible somewhere if they have an online presence, and places that let you customize your order need to have that as a feature of any digital ordering solution they implement. Good? Good.

So, a lot of places I've seen (Wendys, Taco Bell, and McDonald to name a few) Have tried to get around how fucking horrible the DD app itself is by making their own apps with DD integration for the actual ordering/serving of delivery orders. Great, this lets them provide their own menu customization options, serve discounts/coupons, and generally have more control over the user experience. Fantastic. As a bonus, this usually also allows you to just look at the menu whenever you want.

Small issue. All of these apps were written by the worst fucking programmers I have ever witnessed in my life. I havn't gotten angry enough to de-compile or try to reverse engineer one yet, but my user experience has been so consistently bad and I've encountered issues that, as a software engineer, I honestly could not tell you how fucked their system has to be in order to allow that to happen.

Allow me to tell you the worst of these. I'm trying to order delivery from a store. It's late, like 7pm, but I know the place is open till 10. I can confirm this on their website (I do later for reasons that will become apparent) and google maps. So I punch in my address, make my order, and go to checkout. Unfortunately, the app tells me "Your payment method failed. Please select a new method and try again". Which was odd, but not unimaginable. I've had issues with my bank in the past. So I swap cards and try again, thinking nothing of it.

Except, my other card doesn't work either. Nor does using PayPal, or Google Pay, or any of the other payment options I tried. I'm getting desperate. I buy some games on steam just to make sure some of these are working, which they are. I was worried, but now that I've confirmed all my money hasn't been siphoned away somehow, I'm just confused and getting annoyed.

So I start going insane. I buy digital gift cards from several different sites and try using them. No dice, payment failed. I try using the website instead of the app, on my phone and PC. Payment failed. I boot up an android studio instance with a brand new virtual phone, install the app on it, and try to order. Again. Payment failed.

I'm starting to wonder if their servers are just completely down. A friend in a different state can order with no problems. A friend in the same town can order with no fanfare.

But my roommates can't. They have the same issue

Payment failed.

So. I'm going insane. I've now spent almost 3 hours attempting to order food, and I'm starving. It is at this point that my anger finally overcomes my social anxiety, and I do the one thing I never thought I'd do.

I call the store in question.

Now, in all of this there was one crucial mistake I made. See, that friend in the same town? Lived on the other side of town. And there's 2 different stores of this franchise in town. We didn't control for this, because the app doesn't let you pick a store anyways when doing delivery. It's hard locked to whatever one is closest, which isn't a terrible thing to do. You need to get the delivery address anyways, and you know where all your store are, so it cuts out a step for me. But having to choose a store might've clued us in to what was going wrong.

Because the store? Was closed. Not just closed, like mega closed. It was being shut down. It hadn't been open for two weeks, and would never be open again. The order was failing because they'd already taken all the computer systems out, and it couldn't confirm to have received the order.

So there was nothing wrong with the payment. Literally nothing I could have done about this. I am just barred completely from ordering because the app defaults to the nearest location for orders, and my nearest location didn't exist anymore.

And you'd think that there would be some way to communicate this to the user when making the app. But for reasons I can only assume are profit motivated (Though I have no idea how the fuck this is more efficient/profitable), the app just defaults to saying the payment failed.

Now, I wouldn't be this mad if this was just "oops edge case lol" where I suffered the unfortunate consequences of some procrastinator forgetting to do the thing that removes stores from the database. Unfortunate but not really anyone I can blame for it. But no. This is just the most extreme example, and it's not even confined to the one app.

Almost every single app like this I've used defaults to saying the payment failed and to try a new payment method when anything goes wrong. No drivers out on DoorDash to actually move the order? Payment failed. You're trying to order a seasonal item that got dropped today? Payment failed. The companies servers actually are down? Payment failed. You're not connected to wi-fi like an idiot and there's actually something you can do to fix the issue that's not related to payment whatsoever? Payment failed.

What the fuck is up with this lazy ass programming? I seriously doubt there's enough technical debt from these apps to justify not having a robust error catching system that communicates with the user what the issue is. By the fucking stars these people love collecting intrusive data, I'm surprised they havn't used this as an excuse to harvest everyone's fucking location at all times and send "error data" back to central.

But just don't tell me my debit card was declined when I'm trying to order a burger and you closed that store two weeks ago.

#journal #rant #i fucking hate food delivery apps #but i'm a poor bitch with no car #and I lived for 3 months off of a BOGO burger coupon once that just never fucking removed itself from my cart even after I ordered #so I continued to cash in on that one coupon for an entire semester #so like don't fix your apps #but don't tell me my fucking bank is broken when you just can't be bothered to update your fuckin store database

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crescentfool · 7 months

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so you want to use OBS

hello! i’ve decided to compile information on my OBS setup and some resources that have helped me along the way. this is mostly for personal reference, but maybe others can make use of this information!

some notes before i get into it:

i use OBS for both offline recording and (twitch) streaming. any footage i record is edited using DaVinci Resolve 18, which is free.

most of my OBS captures are of video games (through a USB capture card, specifically elgato), and the occasional screen/application capture (like clip studio paint, and sometimes PC games).

as such, the information here is reflective of these experiences. this post is not comprehensive to all of OBS’s features- this is just an overview of the settings and configurations that are most relevant to me.

with that out of the way, all the information will be under the cut!

Basic Setup

file format:

how to change: settings -> output -> recording -> recording format -> press “apply” once finished!

I save most of my recordings as .mkv files- it supports multi-track audio! i prefer .mkv over .mp4 because if your power goes out, you still have a recording to work with.

.mkv files can be read by DaVinci Resolve without an issue- but for Adobe software, they'll need to be remuxed to .mp4 within OBS! (file -> remux recordings -> press the … to select a file -> press the “remux” button)

video resolution and framerate:

how to change: settings -> video -> output (scaled) resolution

my obs canvas is @ 1920 x 1080p (16:9)

i switch between 720p and 1080p as needed! if you're concerned about space, you can probably just go for 720p. i also record at 30 fps, simply because that’s what my capture card supports.

video bitrate:

how to change: settings -> output -> encoder settings (located in both the streaming and recording tab) -> press “apply” once finished!

bitrate is a bit of a doozy to explain, but the most important thing to know is that bitrate affects your video’s quality. lower numbers = lower quality, while higher numbers = higher quality.

generally speaking, you'll want higher bitrate when you're recording things with high depth of information (e.g. you’d want a higher bitrate for something fast-paced like splatoon, compared to a slower-paced game like animal crossing).

my video bitrate is either set to 3000 or 4000 kbps! and here's some of my other (related) settings while i'm at it:

you can put your bitrate at much higher values than me if you're a stickler for quality- but keep in mind that a higher bitrate means:

bigger file size

more information to upload (when streaming)

your computer will need to encode more

i’d recommend reading twitch’s guidelines on encoding, bitrate, resolution, and framerate to get an idea of what values to pick. for people who are doing offline recording or streaming on a different platform, i suggest googling the appropriate resources!

multi-track audio:

this is mostly applicable to anyone looking to do video editing!

multi-track audio basically allows you to separate your audio sources (e.g. discord, game audio, and your own microphone) into different tracks.

this is an immensely helpful tool because it lets you adjust audio levels in post-production (editing). some examples of how this can be used:

increasing someones microphone volume if they speak too softly

increasing/decreasing game audio

muting swear words/sensitive information

completely muting voice call + microphone if you want to upload a no commentary video

and more!

to set this up, take a look at your audio mixer panel, and press the ⚙ icon. this will bring up advanced audio properties.

by checkmarking a track box, it puts the audio on that track. to make the above screenshot easier to digest:

track 1 consists of ALL three audio sources- desktop, elgato, and microphone.

track 2 only has the microphone audio.

track 3 only has desktop audio (i use this for voice calls)

track 4 only has the elgato capture card audio (game audio). the volume has also been lowered so that any speaking voices can be heard clearly.

tracks 5 and 6 are unused.

you might be wondering, “why do all three of these have 1 checked off?” this is what i call the universal audio track. i recommend having a universal audio track for a few reasons:

when you stream from OBS onto twitch/youtube- you have to select ONE audio track.

it’s also a nice backup in case you didn’t separate your audio correctly.

if for whatever reason you need to move around your individual audio tracks in editing, the universal track acts as a nice reference point.

mark off your audio tracks for each audio source as you see fit! once you’re finished with the advanced audio properties, go to settings > output.

for the streaming tab, you’ll want to have the number of your universal audio track selected. in my case, that will be audio track 1.

for the recording tab, checkmark all the audio tracks that are applicable to you (in my case, audio tracks 1, 2, 3, and 4). by default, only audio track 1 is selected.

if you don’t check off the additional audio tracks in the output > recordings section, you will not have access to those audio tracks in editing, and you won’t be able to edit your audio tracks independently of each other. so don’t forget to do this! 👍

custom browser docks

custom browser docks are a great tool for when you’re streaming and want to have access to your twitch chat and/or activity feed! (or if you wanted to have some other web browser on OBS).

to create one, go to docks -> custom browser docks.

you’ll be given a table interface that asks you to put the dock name and URL. for streamers who want to have chat and alerts available, do the following:

on twitch’s homepage, go to the upper right and click your icon

then, click creator dashboard

once you’re on your dashboard, go to stream manager

click the vertical “...” on my chat OR activity feed.

press “pop-out chat” OR “pop-out activity feed”

copy and paste the link into the table back into OBS

press apply once you’re done

click and drag the docks around at your leisure to put them where you like!

if you ever decide you don’t want to have something on your OBS dock (or want to bring something back), go to the toolbar, click “docks,” and click the appropriate dock!

third party things

a section of optional things that you may enjoy having.

streamlabs alerts

this is basically for anyone who streams and wants to have their chat and/or follower notifications visualized on screen!

streamlab alerts can be added to OBS by adding a browser source into your scene, and the specifics can be customized on streamlabs itself. it’s pretty self-explanatory, so i’ll just leave a link to streamlabs website, where you can log in using the streaming platform of your choice: https://streamlabs.com/

discord overlay

this is a browser source that can be set up to show people who are in a server's voice chat and who speaks. i recommend this to people who make multiplayer content- it can help viewers distinguish who is who but also it can be helpful in editing.

to set this up, go to https://streamkit.discord.com/overlay, click “install for OBS,” and after logging in with discord, go to “voice widget” and click the server and voice channel you want.

you are able to apply CSS if you'd like more control over the visuals, but the standard layout tends to work fine for me! a search of “discord overlay css” on youtube can help you get more information.

veadotube mini

this is a pngtuber software that a friend recommended to me! no webcam is required- mouth opening and closing is based on your microphone input!

you can download it here (it’s pay what you want!): https://olmewe.itch.io/veadotube-mini

for a proper tutorial on how to use it, i recommend checking out the app's documentation, which you can read here: https://veado.tube/help/

source record

have you ever wanted to stream something with a chat overlay/layout, but wanted your recording to ONLY be the gameplay? or maybe you wanted to record BOTH your gameplay AND your webcam so that you can have a crisp zoom-in on your webcam!

source record is a third party plugin that can help you with that!

the general gist of source record involves applying the “source record” filter on either a scene or source, and customizing the encoding settings accordingly. the exact details of how to set it up is beyond the scope of this post, so I'll just direct people to this video instead (it was very helpful to me):

youtube

⚠ a quick note about source record: this plugin can be intense for your computer. be sure to do test recordings and the like to see what your computer can handle (and see if the recordings come out the way you like). it took me a few tests before i settled onto something i liked!

you can download and install source record here: https://obsproject.com/forum/resources/source-record.1285/

vdo.ninja

have you ever wanted to do a collaborative video or stream where you feature someone else’s video on your stream? or maybe you’re doing a multi-person streaming event! vdo.ninja is the perfect tool for you!

vdo.ninja turns your OBS virtual camera into a browser source link- which your collaborator can add on their stream! this is a new tool that i’ve added to my arsenal recently- since my friend and i are planning to stream a side order challenge together! i’ve still got to iron it out a bit more, but i like what i’ve used of it so far.

try it out for yourself at their website here (with documentation and demos available on the homepage!): https://vdo.ninja/ (no downloads required!)

ok! i’m set up! what now?

and with that, that’s all of the settings and tools that i thought would be worth mentioning! while most of my setup was written with video games in mind, some of these plugins and setups may be applicable to other types of videos (e.g. tabletop gaming with a physical camera)!

now that i’ve outlined all these settings, i have one more thing i have to say: regardless of what you're using OBS for, do a test recording before doing anything “official” with it. this recording can be as short as 30 seconds. it’s a good habit to develop that can make sure your streams/recordings turn out the way you want them to!

here are the kinds of things i like to check! it’s not an exhaustive list, but this can be a starting point:

video:

does my video look the way i want it to (and can my computer handle that)?

can my computer handle the load of encoding? - OBS will note in the bottom if the encoding is overloaded. if it can’t handle it, turn down your bitrate or adjust other encoding settings (e.g. i had to toggle psycho visual tuning OFF because it was causing lag)

this is especially the case if you're recording PC games- you don’t want to have slowdown on either your game or the recording!

audio:

are my audio sources (e.g. desktop audio and microphone) correct? - if you plug/unplug devices a lot, be sure to check this (settings -> audio).

are any of my audio sources muted? - make sure you don’t have anything on 🔇 if you don’t want it to be muted! otherwise the audio will be lost forever… (i lost my friend’s VC audio once… it was sad)

are my audio tracks separated properly? - requires you to boot up your editing software, but it's worth doing! for the test recording, just have something from all your sources playing at once, and see if your editor has things separated into tracks.

can i hear the voices clearly? or does the music and/or game overpower them?

if for whatever reason your OBS crashes, or you want more information on anything “critical” or “warning” worthy in your set-up, you can go to help > log files > upload current log file > analyze. crash logs currently can’t be analyzed by the log analyzer- but they’re a valuable tool when asking for help on the OBS forums!

and that’s all! for real, this time. i hope that some of these tools and settings can help anyone wanting to get more out of OBS. there’s definitely other things i didn’t touch upon (e.g. audio filters for noise compression, suppression, etc.), so i suggest doing your own research and trying things out!

happy recording/streaming, and thanks for reading! ✨

#lizzy speaks #this was a fun little write up!! i've been slowly getting some of my friends into video making teehee and its SO FUN!!!#(digital) video is like one of my other passions next to art. everyone say thank you splatoon for getting me back into it again <3 #i've been using obs since like 2018 so i wanted to share some of the things i learned for funsies... i really love video...#but also i like having reference posts like this in the case people have questions they want to ask me...#because i don't always remember what video tutorials i watched and it's nice to document that somewhere...#warning to anyone who reads it this is like 2.1k words. i do want to stress that this isn't comprehensive but there's still a lot of info #that i wanted to put for this post...! that said topics like designing your own stream layout + assets for it are NOT in the scope of this #post and nor is this a beginner's guide to obs (i wrote this with the assumption that you know how to record and/or stream and that-#people already have an idea of how to use scenes and the different types of sources obs can use).#i hope everyone's had a lovely march 5th! i would love to look at the fanart but im still not done with reload...#but im hoping to finish it by the end of the month!!! yipee!!!#Youtube

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dol-dee · 5 months

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IK nobody asked buuuuut I'll talk about it anyways.

I somewhat fall into the category of prefering fem iterations of the dol characters. I say somewhat bc, Yeah I like women but thats not the main reason.

DoL HEAVILY relies on tropes and well known character archetypes when it comes to it's NPCs.

A lot of them are ol' reliables and (at least to me) feel very worn out when in their cis male version. Which is why I often gravitate to the version that feels more "fresh" or subversive to me.

For Example: I love my fem Sydney but her particular character trope (corruption of the "pure" religious character) feels a bit more interesting (to me) when its M!Sydney.

Although I will admit that another reason I tend to favor the female versions is that most dol fandom depictions (that I have seen) already have a strong bias towards the male version of these characters. The ground there is plenty covered already and I don't think I can bring much new to the table there.

I don't think most people will care about my particular opinions/List on this , so I'll put it under a cut haha.

Tbf I like to let the game do it's own thing to see what it cooks up in the npcs body, sex and gender department but I do have a few characters that I consistently change like Avery.

Cis M!Avery is just suuuch a tired trope to me (probably bc it's not that uncommon in real life either?) Another man with anger issues who exclusively dates (according to canon aka Vrel) only 18 to 20 year olds? YAWN. idk I could just go look at Leonardo DiCaprios dating chart if I wanted to see that. Obviously, if it does something for you, go right ahead. I'll leave you to your feast, it's just not for me. I need Avery to be a very smarmy, maladjusted butch woman.

Okokok I'll get to the list now (for the characters that I have developed strong opinions about anyways) and I'll go into, what my current/canon run is set to as well as what I prefer depending on what I find more interesting. (with some notes if I have thoughts on the character) uhhhhh Ig I'll do it in Alphabetical order?

Avery: Preferred: F! Avery Current Run: F! Avery (note: I think I went in and manually changed it) - (Nothing more to say really, I already mentioned my reasons. Plus M!Avery just makes me feel icky)

Alex: Preferred: No preference Current Run: M! Alex

Bailey: Preferred: somewhat neutral but leaning towards F! Bailey Current Run: F! Bailey - (Bailey once again seems to have a lot of M! fanworks already and I like the idea of her being either futch or butch. Bailey just strikes me as someone who'd wear a lot of boring suits. Very nondescript/practical)

Eden: Preferred: F! Eden Current Run: F! Eden - (Eden is a case where I really wanted to live my Huntress dbd fantasies out with her but was open to the option of M!Eden. Until I ran into him in my first run and I really didn't like it very much. I prefer her as a hulking hermit woman atp also sad toxic yuri between Eden and Bailey <3)

Harper: Preferred: No preference Current Run: F! Harper - (Harper lowkey gives me Moira Overwatch vibes (mainly bc of my design lmao) so I have a soft spot for fem!Harper)

Kylar: Preferred: No preference Current Run: F! Kylar - (I do think same sex PC and Kylar is hilarious considering Kylar is so fixated on getting you pregnant, so in this case: ig whatevers funnier <3)

Remy: Preferred: F!Remy kinda Current Run: F! Remy - (I'm actually kind neutral on Remy's sex and gender but I do think its somehow funnier when it's F!Remy. Like whats going on there that she wants to give other women humongus tits and milk them?)

Robin: Preferred: No preference Current Run: M! Robin - (Robin is cute either way!)

Sydney: Preferred: No preference Current Run: F! Sydney - ( I have no real preference for Sydney and I already mentioned my thoughts on them)

Whitney: Preferred: F! Whitney Current Run: M! Whitney - (I've seen this trope so many times with hyperagressive dudes. It's not doing much for me. To see that kind of behavior with a fem character instead really revitalizes my interest in It! M!Whitney is fine and hes kinda grown on me but I think I'd have more fun with Whitney if they were femme instead)

#dol rambles #dol opinions #not gonna tag this much just in case #no hate to anyone who prefers all men. I'm just very bi haha

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jadagul · 8 months

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@discoursedrome This thread is already too long so I know from experience I'm going to wuss out of having a good discussion on it due to the sheer Bigness, but I can't resist hashing it out about this stuff! Okay, a little bit:

This is basically the rules-as-physics argument, right, where you can deduce the rules from observation? It's not really related to narrative mechanics, it's the same phenomenon as "can my character deduce the exact success probabilities from repeated trials" or "can my character develop a quantum theory of survivability by experimenting on his own hit points". There's going to be a huge gap between the rules and the game setting as soon as the rules involve numbers! The normal answer to this is that these mechanics are heuristics designed to manage play and are rarely consistent or visible enough that it would be plausible for a character to infer them from experience. And if it's implausible then it smells like metagaming and you'd be justified in just not having the rule work that way in that case -- it turns out this moment works like all those other moments in your life that weren't engaging directly with the game mechanics! But I would agree that there's a lot of pressure to metagame when the stakes are very high, and it's often wise for a designer to avoid conflicts of interest there.

To extend the analogy, would you argue that it's implausible for characters in a novel not to become genre-savvy simply because the world they're living in operates on those genre rules? Or going beyond that: if people wrote genre fiction so that they did, would that be better? I think generally you need to assume characters don't become genre savvy even if it "makes sense", but I'd go beyond that to argue that it usually doesn't make sense -- characters can't tell when something is part of the narrative and when it's just something that happens, so this doesn't happen to other people but it doesn't even consistently happen to them. Similarly, characters in a game can't tell when mechanics are involved or how.

But the general point here is that unless a game explicitly tells you that the rules are "laws of nature" in the setting then they aren't, and if you bring that tension into the spotlight by having your character act like they are, it really forces the issue. The classic example is the character who is mostly immune to gunfire mechanically, but not narratively, so they shoot themselves in the temple with a huge gun to show off. The standard advice here is "they die", which is obviously not exactly right: the correct response is actually to go over how this all works OOCly, emphasize that if they do this the character will die and everyone will assume they killed themselves on purpose and be very confused, and then if they really want to they still can. And this isn't really a narrative mechanic, again, you get there pretty rapidly once you add hit points!

But I do take your point, which is that the disconnect can be a bit jarring, reaching a peak in games where the player is actively antagonistic to their own character, and it bothers some people more than others. Game designers should decide what audience they're targeting and avoid alienating people carelessly to no particular benefit. That's all fine; but I still feel the need to emphasize that it's always a matter of degree, and that the minimum you can pare this problem down to (outside of freeform or the far reaches of FKR) is still pretty large.

Now with regard to the earlier question of "should everyone use the same rules"; this IMO is mostly a flavour thing, it's about selling the objectivity of the setting and the idea that everyone casts the same Fireball. This is good, but it trades off against fussy and intensive mechanics, which is bad, so you think about what you want and you pick your poison. That said, there's a limit: the idea of using the same ruleset to cover PC ad-hoc crafting projects and off-camera NPC candlemakers is laughable. There's no way to do that without it being a mess; it's one of many, many places where "rules as physics" and "rules as game or adjudication mechanism" are irreconcilable. With legendary or magical items you can make it work, but the issue there is less difficulty than rate: there are always loads of people as powerful as the PCs, so if it's feasible for someone at that skill level to make, say, two or three magic items in a year, those people could all just be churning them out for the heck of it. But if it's much harder than that, the prospect of PCs doing it and especially of them doing it as their "thing" rapidly slips away. It's the same basic issue as "what if I want to train up as a competent doctor from a baseline of zero" -- well, the game's answer is not that it takes ten years, but that's got to be roughly how it works for the average person, right? You can just say that the setting has wide variation in potential and the PCs are at the upper end of it, I guess, or that some mechanism like "experience points" is driving their growth, but on some level it's kind of fake, right? You live with it.

First off, yeah, that thread was already too long and also it was on someone's post that I'd originally misread to begin with, so let's put it here.

I really have one major response to your post, which is

The classic example is the character who is mostly immune to gunfire mechanically, but not narratively,

what the fuck is wrong with you? Why would you ever do that? What does it mean to be immune to something mechanically but not narratively? Where do I apply to get your game design license revoked?

Like the game rules should tell me what happens if I shoot myself in the head without dodging. And they should tell me what happens when someone else shoots me in the head when I can't dodge. And those should be the same thing because it's the same action.

The version of this I've heard comes from D&D 3e: fall damage tops out at 20d6, so the maximum possible damage is 120. A typical level 11 barbarian should have 121 hit points (if not more through Con bonuses; I think they're very likely to actually have 132.) So by the rules, a full-health barbarian can reliably jump off a cliff and survive the fall.

And some people are like "yes but obviously a real human won't consistently survive a thousand-foot fall" but of course what the rules are telling you is that a level 11 barbarian is not, in fact, a normal human; they can absorb a level of punishment that no real person possibly could.

People periodically try to reinterpret hit points as, like, luck, or dodging ability, but as you say that never holds up once you start asking questions about what's going on. (The classic question is poison-on-hit attacks, but honestly the shooting someone in the head bit is also good.) In order for hit points to make sense, you kind of have to say that some people can walk off being shot in the head at point-blank range, and there's nothing wrong with that. That's just the world you're building.

(Or you can keep max hp low enough and gun damage high enough that a max roll crit will kill anyone, but that generally undermines what people want the hit points to do in other contexts. If you want people to be superhuman just let them be superhuman!)

---

For the last bit: yeah obviously you're not going to, like, make crafting rolls for everyone in the city. But if your mechanics are wildly at odds with a functioning economy you really should expect your players to (1) ask questions and (2) exploit the hell out of them.

The world has to work the way the rules say it does because otherwise what's the point of the rules and how do you know how the world works?

#ttrpgs #dungeons and dragons #d&d #metagaming

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necros-writing-stuff · 8 months

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Kylar while f*cking PC: “I’m going to do this until no other person ever looks at you.” - f*cks like once a week and ignores PC most of the day to play on his computer. Waves knife around at school to “protect” PC but starts crying and running when Whitney shows up (literally Kylar is scared of hurting anyone but PC?) will stare on blankly and get jealous if PC is attacked in front of them. Keeps PC in basement once and gets PC arrested, and possibly sent to the PILLORY or JAIL where they can be attacked, any other time they take PC home at high jealousy. Will not rescue PC if they pass out after the Stockholm syndrome event, even though they’re with Kylar on a “date” after this event, thus leaving PC behind to get attacked by dogs or even FOUND. BY. EDEN. (From one yandere to the better yandere lol) One school rescue event of taking PC to the nurse. PC is not even allowed to sleep at Kylar’s house.

meanwhile Eden: “You’re my possession. Mine alone. If anyone else touches you, they’re dead.” - literally f*cks PC up to 12 times a day. keeps PC in a cage and collared to actively induce Stockholm syndrome while using them as a bangmaid until they obey. Repeats the break-in process as many times as it takes. Hunts down PC if they’re away for too long even if it means going into the town, which they hate. Will angrily f*ck PC to assert dominance, after a rescue, if someone attacked PC in front of them. Is willing to shoot people to protect PC. Multiple rescue events. Will blow up a building to save PC. Will pay full attention to and spend time with PC whenever they ask. Tries new things or things they’re uncomfortable with for PC. Eden always reminds us that their home is PC’s home even when they’re angry with PC. ❤️

The winner is clear here. Kylar talks the talk but Eden is true to their word.

#kylarslander #Edenbestyandere

Someone hasn't played the game in a while, cause ooo boy your info is outdated.

Eden can no longer blow up a building because HEY WHERE THE FUCK WOULD HE GET THE BOMB FROM. Also the UFarm rescue is gone because it makes no sense too.

But regardless. All of this stuff is very fitting for their characters. I think Kylar is well-written and consistent btw, when I say I hate them it's not because of their gameplay or their writing. It's just. Who they are as a person mentally and physically and the kinks around them (such as all the cucking shit). And how their mommy/daddy issues work. And the fact that they're younger than me. Not even having chest hair or big beefy muscles.

OMG HAHAHAHAHA BEEFY HAIRY KYLAR. DWARFCORE KYLAR HAHAHAHAAAA

#spill your guts #anonymous #eden the hunter #kylar slander #not writing

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balioc · 9 months

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LARP Sizes

When you talk about the "size" of a theater LARP, you might mean a lot of different things -- how long it lasts, how long the game materials are, how much physical space you need to run it, etc. (These things heavily correlate with one another, which helps to confuse the issue.) But the most important version of "size," of course, is player count. A LARP is nothing more or less than a bunch of characters doing stuff, and the experience is shaped heavily the number of characters who are contributing to it.

(It's like party size for a TTRPG, only more so, because you don't have an omnipresent GM who can keep everything in hand for everyone.)

If you're thinking of writing a theater LARP, I would strongly encourage you to think about your game structurally when you're deciding how big it's going to be. Don't just decide that you want to write a large game because you're feeling ambitious, or that you want to write a small game because you're feeling nervous; don't just include every character concept that you have in your head. Choose a size that works well with the kind of experience you want to generate, and with the mechanics you have in mind.

Every additional character changes things, of course, but (in my opinion) these are the size ranges that really matter:

0-1 PCs: This is not a LARP, in the conventional sense. This is a joke or an art project.

2-3 PCs: The PCs cannot escape each other at all. The game will necessarily consist of a single extended conversation, and you should think of it in those terms. It's the writer's job to make sure that conversation is interesting and sustainable.

[The general rule is that character sheets and other documents tend to get longer as the game gets bigger, because there's more material that has to be incorporated...but games with 2-3 players often have really long sheets, just for the sake of making sure that everyone has enough to talk about, and that every PC has some very substantive thoughts about every other PC.]

4-7 PCs: At this size, the game will likely default to being a single round-table conversation, and fundamentally everyone is going to have to deal with everyone else -- but the PCs will be able to split off for private chats (without leaving anyone twiddling his thumbs). Plotting and politics begin to become possible, although you shouldn't expect that anyone will really be able to hide anything from anyone else. This is an excellent size for games that are basically about emotional tangles.

8-15 PCs: By my standards, a "medium-sized" LARP. There's enough going on that you can thread multiple plots into your narrative, although you should expect that everyone will likely be interacting with everyone else, at least to some extent. It is totally plausible that a PC will be able to maintain a more-or-less complete understanding of the total game situation, although you can't count on anyone in particular doing so. Complexity and factional conflict are viable here. This is the sweet spot for intricate integrated mechanical structures where you want every PC to be interfacing with the same system. It is not an accident that two of the most successful game-structure templates that have come out of my LARPing tradition -- the Dance and the Dawn template and the Be Not Afraid template -- require exactly 13 PCs.

16-30 PCs: In a LARP of this size, a PC can probably have more-than-zero clue about every other character in the game, and about all the overarchingly important plots...but no one is going to be able to keep up with everything that's going on, not even remotely. Chaos and fog-of-war start dominating the play experience here. Games this big usually require multiple interconnected narratives, and there are usually whole plots that just don't have much to do with each other. It becomes important for the writer to ensure that any given PC has enough different things going on that his game won't get randomly destroyed by the tides of happenstance.

31+ PCs: Any given PC will be totally clueless about whole swathes of the game; certain characters, and certain plots, will completely fail to intersect at all. Either the LARP is secretly a bunch of loosely-connected game modules, or it needs to be robust enough to survive all manner of butterfly-effect-generated madness as unusual outcomes and choices ripple outwards. (I don't actually have any experience writing LARPs at this scale. My biggest game is for 30 PCs, and it was definitely straining against the kind of structural cohesion that I tried to impose on it.)

#larp

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tavern-scene · 11 months

Text

This Blog Was An Experiment

so here are my thoughts

it works... mostly. it suffers from a few things that aren't completely in anyone's control

time delay. the fact that you can only make one decision a day limits the playability and interaction which lowers retention rates in players'

consistency. the first issue could be classified as delayed gratification (a completely sound psychological trick) if I was more consistent with posting

who IS the PC and combat. with no set idea of the class or alignment of the caricature, it poses an issue for the development of a story and combat becomes difficult without knowledge of the PC's powerset

combat is just so slow. like problem one this is a function of the medium we have chosen to play in, however, combat is different because it takes away urgency and limits decision-making, and because of the time commitment to combat I have artificially lowered HP of enemies

all in all the idea is functional so let me ask you

#tavern scene #ttprpg #tumbler rpg

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utilitycaster · 11 months

Note

You have such a way of articulating things I’ve been vaguely feeling into intelligent coherent statements. Would you care to elaborate on the way that how Laudna+Imogen “went canon” was a curse?

Hey anon,

Thank you! So this is the thing: obviously I tend towards a fairly critical and snarky demeanor, but like, the best way to put it is in the context of the impending Nein show. I, and most of the people I chat with who are also not feeling Imogen and Laudna's relationship, are not of the "if that PURPLE FLOATY HOMEWRECKER SKANK SHOWS UP I will EXPLODE and SCREAM and DIE" or "fjorester divorce" or pretending Yasha doesn't exist persuasion re: this relationship (or for that matter the WELL if Percy dies after 70 years of marriage to Vex and then she's with Keyleth for the rest of her life WE WIN type of person either). Like, honestly, there was a post advocating for a breakup, but I think it included within it an argument that they reunite after some time apart, and that's kind of the mood. I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed. There's no ship war to be had. I don't dislike the ship because of competition or some fundamental dislike of the characters, and I honestly would like to be able to like it, and the path for it to not suck would have been immensely simple. That path even still exists, though with every week it grows narrow and less smooth and far more awkward, but I think it will require a pretty serious out of game conversation that as far as I know hasn't happen, and I am not holding my breath given the lack of movement.

That's why it's a curse: the generic form of this curse would be "may your ship become canon prematurely, with with only one person really invested, and that person not actually prepared for it or expecting it, and may it have virtually no moments and exist in a very plot-heavy work where it is almost certainly going to be largely out of focus, after the groundwork when things were quieter was never laid, and may it be so close to being good but consistently miss the opportunities for that to happen."

Just to recap the issues, stripping away all the past snark:

It's never really felt like these were two people who had been best friends for two years. They've always felt like friends of circumstance - like people you meet the first week of college and kind of go around with so as not to be alone, or the only other person your age on your street. Because they were both extremely lonely they clung to each other...but they really don't actually connect with each other much in conversation other than just kind of blandly repeating how much they mean to each other and never showing it. They have no real boundaries or limits with each other, likely because of that fear of being alone, but they aren't exploring that in a Heavenly Creatures or Thoroughbreds kind of way either. There's virtually no sense of history - no inside jokes, no shared experiences prior to Zhudanna except for one throwaway line that, like many of their interactions, fell flat. Like...I don't actually think that it's bad to aim for a platonic female friendship and end up with an F/F ship but like. Beau and Jester had a great platonic female friendship that happened to also include Beau's brief crush. Imogen and Laudna didn't even sell me on them being friends, let alone lovers. They have always felt like oddly clingy roommates. Their respective interactions with quite literally every other PC - few of which I find romantic and many of which I find explicitly not romantic - all feel like they have more depth. Orym is explicitly not attracted to either of them and they've both had more meaningful and honest moments with him. Pun unintended but they both felt infinitely more alive during the party split when they couldn't just go to their dull gray comfort zone of each others' meaningless repetitive affirmations.

Zooming into that lack of boundaries and conflict, there's no arc. Once characters get together often the conflict resolves, but there needs to be a build to that point, and we simply don't have that. The two points where this could have happened were: the gnarlrock fight, had it actually played out, could have led to a deepening of the relationship and some honestly and character development but due to what I am again interpreting as fear of losing the other to the point of never addressing any of these points of friction, it just resumed the status quo. Similarly, as I mentioned, Laura flat out said she went in expecting to be rejected. I think that story would have won me over. I think that if Laudna had rejected her, and Imogen had to grapple with that (and, by extension, Laudna's justified anger and trauma from the Team Issylra didn't disappear into thin air) and they spend some time actually figuring out who they are as individuals and Laudna lets herself be more than a validation machine who pushes her emotions down, and then eventually they come back around to each other? I'd be unbelievably on board. And you can go back, to my posts and others, in which we were pretty harsh on the fanon cottage cheese (yes, I am going to try to make this happen) version but said "I trust Laura and Marisha to do this in a way that is interesting" and then they straight-up didn't.

Obviously this has the potential to change - I even think the next episode is finally a case of maybe bringing all the Delilah stuff to a much needed head which in turn might introduce something into the relationship - but man it's been a whole lot of nothing since they kissed. I think Laura's initiated every single conversation, as mentioned Laudna can't even reciprocate 5 minutes of dancing on a ghost pirate ship without wandering off, and they didn't even bother to take watch together.

Something I keep going back to, and which ties into the above, is Brennan Lee Mulligan's whole discussion of how important character creation is to story. The thing is, these characters were created as close friends. Why does this feel so lacking? Like...why do Kima and Allura, two NPCs, feel like they have more weight? Why did the platonic relationship of Molly and Yasha, for which Ashley wasn't even present, feel like it actually was a friendship of 8 months? Sam and Liam came up with an entire system of grifts! Why is literally the only detail we have from the time between leaving Gelvaan and the time arriving in Jrusar is that at some point Imogen and Laudna saw someone with nipple tassles, and that came up once, like 60 episodes ago? Why are people so frequently sold on say, Loquatius/Laerryn, which had less than 24 hours of gameplay over a single night in-game? Why does every single Circle of Needle and Thread member relationship feel more real? Why were Aabria and Travis able to convincingly play ex-lovers in a handful of episodes despite Aabria deliberately surprising him? Like...I am not saying preparation wasn't done, because it very well might have been, but it's not coming through at all and plenty of other people have managed to get across an existing friendship or relationship in a fraction of the time, within the same campaign, so it's not that the plot is moving too fast for it. And again, if prep wasn't done, or if it's not coming across, that's really fixable, but it hasn't been fixed. I think of the 4SD episode where, five or six episodes later, Marisha and Laura still hadn't talked about the relationship and it's like...yeah. We can tell. Literally a two hour trip to a cafe would fix this but god I don't think there's been one.

Anyway, obviously this was an incredibly popular ship, but it's honestly slowed down noticeably since going canon because...it's not that great, and there's not much content in canon. I think a big appeal of the ship was the anticipation and the fanon and now that it's canon...I suspect a lot of people are quietly realizing that actually yeah this is kind of all it is, at least for now, and something is going to have to happen to bring about a change.

And I hope so too - I joke about being a hater, and I am very much a critic...but this really is the realization of that post about being more of a dismayer than a hater. Laura's past two ships are probably my favorites, and Beauyasha is high up there, and even as Vaxleth isn't really up my alley it's sweet and it makes sense and has a lot of great moments. It really would not take a lot of work to make this ship good or at least okay and not...nothingness, but it does take some, and I haven't seen it.

#answered #Anonymous #cr tag #long post

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